Surgery results

Like almost every installment of my blog, this has good and bad news. In this installment, I will attempt to explain what did and didn’t happen during Wednesday’s scheduled surgery to repair a fracture in my left leg.

Due to avascular necrosis, there was a fracture in my shin bone. My surgeon’s expectations were to scope the leg; then remove a bone graft from my hip; drill a few holes; pack the holes; and finally insert two screws across the top of the bone to hold everything in place. I am sure you can imagine my surprise, when I came to in the recovery room to find this couldn’t be done. Needless to say I walked in with a broken leg and left with a broken leg.

This is what did happen. He performed scopes on my both knees. In each knee, he found the same problem. The cartilage between my thigh bone (the femur) and the knee joint had peeled off the femur. It was hinging on the joint, which resulted in pain, instability and discomfort. The cartilage was removed from each knee and I will eventually need both knees replaced.

Here is the good news. My right knee feels much better. Better today than when I entered the hospital Wednesday morning. Give me a few weeks of physical therapy and it should hold up for a while. The surgeon believes the fracture looked worse on the MRI than when he took a look inside. So even though there is less pain with the peeled cartilage, the overall stability of that leg is still questionable.

Luckily, I have a high tolerance for pain. I was told most patients wouldn’t have been walking around like me, let alone walking around without the aid of pain medication. This puts me in a better position to hold off further surgery for a longer period of time.

Am I disappointed? Yes. Is my son going to be disappointed, that daddy still can run? Yes. But I have some relief and it is better than the alternative. Monday, I was trapped on a flight of stairs with tears in my eyes. Today, I walked a corridor and climbed up and down stairs with minimal pain.

I’ll stay tough. I’ll stay positive. Give me a week or two and I’ll be out and about. Thank you for all the well wishes. I also want to thank brothers Prousalis and Davidson for visiting and mom and dad for taking care of me.

Cheers.